


Retrieval

by greygerbil



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bathtub Sex, Enemies to Lovers, High Fantasy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Necromancy, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:43:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26918311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greygerbil/pseuds/greygerbil
Summary: When Karat awakes from death, he is looking at the man he has fought for the past fifteen years.
Relationships: Knight with Necromantic Powers/His Deceased Arch-Rival He Raised from the Dead, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 214
Collections: Canon Ball 2020





	Retrieval

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shiny_silver_socks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shiny_silver_socks/gifts).



Karat felt colder than he ever had in his life. Even high up in the air over the white mountaintops of the Spears or on board of a ship crossing the North Sea, at least the freezing air had pushed on him from the outside. Now his bones were made of ice, his blood the rain crackling down in a storm, his organs clumps of snow.

It was difficult to focus on anything else but the cold, yet Karat realised he was not sitting at the river Amahal anymore, waiting for the ferrywomen to carry him and the other dead souls to the underworld. With how long the war had gone on, there had been a crowd there and death was the great equaliser. Even one of the greatest knights of the Kingdom of Thale had to wait in line with the starved and the senselessly slaughtered. Considering how he had found his end, in which it had been revealed to him how useless all the death he’d caused for the last fifteen years had been, he’d not pushed to the front. An eternity of languishing at the bank of the cloud river would have been a fair reward for his deeds.

But where had he gone now? He’d clambered on no boat, hadn’t drowned himself in the thick clouds.

He forced his eyes open, his lids heavy as lead.

Above him stood Sir Thorand Fell, long dark hair framing his sharp-edged, pale face, watching Karat out of his watery blue eyes. Karat had done his level best to hasten Thorand’s visit to the underworld for as long as the war had gone on, but Thorand had been alive last he had heard. Then, he smelled sweetblossom and honeydew, saw the fires burning in a circle of braziers around him, and old bones from graves disturbed for Karat’s benefit laying on the stone ground.

“I always knew – that they were right about you, witch,” Karat ground out and then coughed, grey dust falling from his mouth. “You do know forbidden arts.”

“You were always a clever one,” Thorand said laconically.

Still shivering, Karat wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“They bothered to give me a proper burial, did they?”

A mouth full of ashes and robes of pure white. It felt like mockery. He swung his legs over the side of the stone slab he laid on, spreading his wings just to feel them, swayed, almost fell forward.

Thorand grabbed him tightly by the shoulder.

“Careful. You did just wake up from the dead.”

“They betrayed me,” Karat murmured. “I died turning my back to the kingsguard.”

And considering it had been the whole gaggle of them together, there was no doubting that the king himself had told them to do it. Karat had asked too many questions, had noticed too much those last few months. If a knight of his standing had spread the message that the war against the Empire had been based on deceit, that in fact the murder of the queen, the king’s older sister, had been plotted inside the court and not by Falgean forces, it would have sown too much dissent.

Thorand raised his brows. It was not easy to surprise him, but Karat had done it.

“The official story out of Thale is that you fell to assassins of the Falgean Empire.”

“Of course it is,” Karat said.

Again he spat ashes on the stone ground, looked up at Thorand. The two of them had fought for fifteen years, clashed on the battlefield with hundreds of knights around them and alone in the steppes; they had set on useless peace councils and sniped at each other across the table; they had gotten letters across enemy lines to continue the insults and the conversations even when the Empress and the King had long ceased talking. He believed Thorand that he hadn’t known the way Karat had died, just from the way he quickly turned away, plunging a red-stained knife he was holding into a basin of water, brows drawn as he washed the weapon with too much vigour. He always looked tense like this when he considered new information, as if the idea that something important had escaped his notice offended him.

“This is news to you,” Karat stated.

“Yes.”

“Then why am I alive?”

It would have made perfect sense if Thorand had been aware of the betrayal. He might have hoped to use Karat as a cudgel against the King, the most improbable and best witness.

Thorand’s hands halted in the water. He pulled the knife out and set it down carefully on the bed of flowers that filled the room with their scent.

“A man like you dead to common cutthroats? It just didn’t seem right to let the story go like that.” He turned to the door. “Apparently, I had good instinct, too. It seemed too ignoble a death for you. Now rest, or you’ll undo my hard work.”

Thorand swept out of the room and Karat stared at his knees, trying to collect something out of the pieces his life had collapsed into moments before his death. When he’d sat waiting for the boats to the underworld, it had seemed a pointless task, chaos he’d left behind. Now he was suddenly back and all he’d believed in and fought for was still wrong.

-

The fires burning in the braziers slowly but surely thawed Karat, but as he stood to look at himself in the mirror, he could see that death would stay with him.

It wouldn’t be as obvious if his killers had not so meticulously tried to prevent any chance of survival. Every scar left by the knives was now a night-black crack in his dark skin, a gap opening on a thin sliver of void that felt soft to the touch and yet not entirely like flesh. Karat had not seen these before, but he’d read of them. These were the marks of the retrieved and they never went away again. As he surveyed them, he found a whole mess over his heart, over his stomach, several nervously unsteady lines cutting his throat. His face was marred by a dozen slashes which had somehow missed his eyes, but made a mess of the rest. There were so many over his body that Karat could all but smell the fear on them as he looked at them. _Good._ At least his attackers had not underestimated him. Had they left a flicker of life in him, he would have done his best to tear their throats out with his bare hands.

Only his wings were just like before, white like the shroud in which he had been wrapped. Karat folded them around himself, probably looking like the egg his people climbed out of at the start of their lives. Somehow it seemed fitting. These were, after all, his first moments back on earth.

Yet, much like those children cracking the shell, he could not remain hiding here forever. Karat picked up the shroud he had discarded and wrapped it around his body. When he opened the door, he found it unlocked.

It shouldn’t surprise him. Thorand knew as well as Karat that he had nowhere left to run to.

As he walked down the corridor towards the patch of light falling out of the open door at the end of the hallway, he glanced out of the window. Like he’d suspected, they were in Rittberg Castle by the Fastwater, which fell in a cascade over a cliff just beyond the treetops, glittering in the evening light. Thorand had been gifted the castle by the Empress seven years ago when he’d dashed Karat’s forces in a crushing defeat. Karat had gotten back at him for it the spring after. In fall, the leaves on the trees here stretched golden, red, and orange out over the rolling, hilly lands here. It was a beautiful place. Years ago, Karat had already thought so, hovering over the Fastwater to scout Thorand’s new base of operations, just out of reach of arrows from the parapets of Rittberg Castle.

Thorand sat in his study, but looked up from the scroll on his desk when Karat entered.

“It must have been hard work getting my body.”

Thorand gave that smug, lopsided smile that had made Karat’s blood boil for years.

“The defences of Hindraim are pitiful now. There are barely any of you telvians left, either. You were Thale’s last great guardian of the sky.”

His people had been a dying breed for a while now. Karat wondered how many deaths he was responsible for by motivating them to go to war on Thale’s side.

“I suppose I should defend the reputation of the kingdom’s forces, but I didn’t even get a count on how many scars I have from the kingsguards’ knives.”

“You think the king sent them?” Thorand asked.

“Of course. After all, he did kill his sister and I was about to find out.”

Thorand shook his head.

“That’s not a surprise. Truly, your greatest weakness was always that you think everybody is as honourable as you.”

Karat’s lips twisted in an ugly smile. “Apparently. How does it feel to know that you were right all this time?”

Slowly, Thorand turned a quill between his fingers.

“Had I known your true cause of death, I would have revived you just to say ‘I told you so’.”

Despite everything, despite his whole life, Karat had to laugh. He fell down in a chair that stood in the corner. Thorand, the old bastard. How many times had the drudgery of battle and continued death only felt bearable knowing they would face off again? How many evenings had he poured into writing letters to that same man, imploring him to see reason as they were throwing history and philosophy and the gods in each others’ faces to make a point? It had seemed, in a twisted way, that the war would have been much more dreadful without him.

“What else do you want? It must be something,” Karat pushed.

“I told you, it was not the right way to die. You were mine to kill.”

“Why not kill me now?”

Thorand, usually so quick with words, simply kept turning the quill in his hand.

There was another reason he might be here. Karat was not dumb nor blind; and he was not the only one whose pen or mouth had slipped at times, letting Thorand know he would be formidable were he not blinded by his wrong cause, an accusation they had levelled at each other time and again. It had almost come to a head when Karat had been briefly imprisoned in a war camp led by Thorand. They had talked through several nights until, one morning, a guard had let his attention waver and Karat fled to the skies still in chains, but not without a confusing pang of regret for losing Thorand’s presence.

“If you revived me for _those_ purposes,” he said brashly, glancing at the open door to the bedroom, “you got a bad deal out of it.” He looked at a gaping black wound on his arm. “They sliced me open like meat for supper.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thorand said, sounding for once actually insulted.

Karat just shrugged his shoulders. He’d known the truth was not so prosaic, but he’d wanted to provoke him. Oddly enough, for how often he’d cursed him, he thought better of Thorand than that.

“So why?” he asked again.

“What is this infernal questioning? Why must I have had a purpose for you?”

“When do you not have a purpose for something?”

“You’re alive because I did not want you dead!” Thorand snapped.

They looked at each other. Karat’s newly beating heart did its duty at greatest speed. Thorand stared at him wildly, seemed to want to look away, but could not. Neither of them had ever backed down easily.

“How unusually simple for you,” Karat murmured. “No scheme? No plan?”

“Should you not be happy about that? You always complained I was half spymaster, half knight.”

Karat _was_ glad, in the strangest way possible. On the banks of the cloud river, he’d had to grapple with the knowledge that his closest companions had literally put the knife in his back, but now he knew that he was not all alone in life.

He got up and stood before Thorand, who rose as Karat approached. Thorand was a head taller, but Karat’s presence in a room always grew when he spread his wings as he did now, the pinion feathers touching the stone walls on both sides of the broad chamber.

Karat kissed him without an explanation. They’d exchanged words and blows enough over these many years and somehow the fact that he had come back torn seemed not to deter Thorand at all if the passionate force with which he grabbed him now was any indication.

No, of course it would not. They had moved past such trivial concerns.

“You need to show me to your washing room,” he said, leaning back. “Under all your magic flowers, I smell like the mud of river Ahamal.”

“We’ve rolled in worse mud together,” Thorand said with a brief smile, waving him to follow.

There was a broad, empty tub in the washing room, but Thorand pointed his finger at it and it was immediately filled with steaming water pulled from the moisture in the air. Karat stared at it.

“You’ve seen me summon storms and chase you with lightning to take you out of the air like a dragonfly,” Thoran said, raising a brow. “You cannot be surprised I know an apprentice’s trick like this.”

“I’ve seen you raise a dead man, too,” Karat said. “Somehow, this seems beneath you in its mundanity.”

Thorand snorted.

“Then you may feel special that I have employed such powers for you.”

Karat dropped the shroud without shame. Thorand had seen the parts of him he was really not proud of out there on the battlefields: hot bloodlust, shaking desperation, raging fury. This ruined body was little to hide.

“They got you from the back first, did they not?” Thorand asked.

As Karat had his back to him, Thorand must have seen the wounds that Karat had not, but knew painfully to be there.

“What does it look like?”

“It goes all the way up your spine, and across. Between your wings it looks like a crater.”

“Cowards,” Karat spit as he turned, wings beating the air. “I trained with them in the courtyard. We ate at the same tables. I taught Gilmond how to handle a sword when he was still a knave. They could have done me the honour of taking me down in a real fight, at least.”

“I’m not sure they actually could have, even with all your lessons.”

Karat had to chuckle as he lowered himself in the warm water. “Compliments now?”

“Only the truth. You know I do not hesitate to criticise you when you deserve it. I relish it, in fact.”

Karat shook his head. The warm water felt good, seemed to scrape some of the ice in his bones away. He looked Thorand up and down.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Get in.”

Thorand opened his mouth, then put aside whatever polite or pious protest he had prepared and slid his dark mantle off his shoulders, followed by the shimmering red silk tunic and the black breeches. Karat felt like they were a thousand years older than when they had met for the first time, but Thorand was still handsome, muscular, with only a few scars looking the way human flesh should carry them, unlike his own. Karat knew which ones he had left himself. There was also a thin, fresh line of red down his right arm. Karat figured that was where he had taken the blood for the ritual.

With two men and Karat’s wings squeezed inside the tub, it was crowded. Flesh and feathers slid together. Karat let his head loll against his shoulder, saw that Thorand’s cock was hard as he watched him. Somehow, he felt at peace and while Thorand looked interested, there was no hasty greed in his eyes. They had taken so long to get here there was no reason to hurry now.

Finally, Karat gave the sign, splashing water all over the stone ground as he raised his wings out of the tub to make room for them to move. Thorand folded his legs under himself and got on his knees, leaning over Karat, hands on the rim of the bathtub next to his shoulders.

Thorand’s body felt warmer than the fire in the braziers and the hot water they sat in against Karat’s skin. Karat pulled him in, spread his legs so he could sink between them, held him up with one hand on the shoulder so Thorand could, without fear of slipping, grab Karat’s cock and stroke it hard and fast.

Karat sank a little deeper, angled his hips.

“Fuck me,” he said.

Thorand let go off his cock and pressed two fingers against his hole.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Patience.”

Karat scowled at Thorand’s smirk, but he let him do what he wanted because Thorand’s long fingers were quick to find the pressure points inside him that had his wings shudder like leaves in a wind. He sucked at Thorand’s throat while he pressed into his hand. The fantasies that he’d always forbidden himself to have crashed down on him like a wave.

“Enough,” he growled, and for once Thorand listened.

They had nothing to ease the way and Thorand’s cock was big, so Thorand’s thrusts were short and shallow and quick. However, the reason that ruled them there was soon wiped away by lust and Karat figured if he’d survived death, he could live with being sore for a couple of days, or ask for a healing potion from Thorand in the morning. He pushed up until he was almost on his lap, until he could impale himself on him with his arms around Thorand’s neck, and Thorand let him as his hands wandered up into Karat’s wings and dishevelled his feathers, grasping hands full of them and then holding on to his shoulders, pressing Karat down into his lap, thrusting harder and faster.

Karat came over him and Thorand in him. They were almost perfectly synched, evenly matched as usual.

-

Wrapped in simple pieces of long, undyed fabric, the two of them made their way to Thorand’s bedchambers. Karat sat naked on the side of the bed.

“And what now?” Karat asked.

“I don’t know,” Thorand took the place by his side. “I told you, I wanted you alive. You are here. You are with me. I succeeded at what I tried to do.”

“But if I’m alive, I have an obligation.”

Thorand sat straight.

“To the people who stabbed you?” he asked incredulously. “I knew your sense of duty was sometimes too much, but this foolishness-”

“To the people – my companions, my soldiers – who are being misled by the traitorous kinslayer on Thale’s throne,” Karat interrupted. “And the way I see it, if control of my home through the Empire is what will root out this poisonous weed, then I must help it along.” He gave a weak smile. “Imagine us in war together.”

“We would be good at it,” Thorand said, slightly awed.

Karat huffed. “We would fight about strategy every night.”

“It would make us better.”

“Yes,” Karat admitted. “I suppose it always has.”

It used to be they were each other’s whetstones, sharpening their skills at the other’s tactics. Now, perhaps, they could be blades on the same side.

As he looked over at Thorand, he saw that Thorand smiled brightly, without that trace of sarcasm that was so often in his gaze. The naively beautiful expression quickly vanished when he noticed Karat’s eyes on him, replaced by something more measured and slightly sheepish.

Karat enveloped him in his wing.


End file.
